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Businesses Software The Almighty Buck Transportation United States

Lyft Says Its Revenue Is Growing Nearly 3x Faster Than Uber's (techcrunch.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the don't-blink dept.
U.S. ride-sharing company Lyft says it passed $1 billion in revenue last year and that its revenue grew 168 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2017, almost three times faster than Uber's reported 61 percent growth. "Uber, of course, is still much larger than Lyft -- it generated a reported $7.5 billion in revenue last year and operates in many more cities and countries," notes Recode. "While its fourth-quarter growth may have been smaller than Lyft's percentage-wise, it was still almost certainly many times larger dollar-wise. Both companies are still unprofitable." From the report: But the big-picture reality is that despite Uber's head start, its early dominance, ability to raise massive amounts of financing, aggressive (often allegedly illegal) growth tactics, faster move into self-driving cars and everything else in its favor, it has not been able to destroy Lyft. Instead, Lyft capitalized somewhat on Uber's missteps and unsavory reputation, raised another $2 billion last year, gained market share, launched its first international market last year (Toronto) and seems poised to exist for the foreseeable future.
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Lyft Says Its Revenue Is Growing Nearly 3x Faster Than Uber's More

Lyft Says Its Revenue Is Growing Nearly 3x Faster Than Uber's

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  • Isn't it easy to have more growth when you have much more room for growth?
    I wonder if Lyft uses illegal tactics like Uber. The latest I heard about UBER, in Greece they provide fake private contracts to their drivers, since they operate there under the guise of renting vehicles (which has a 6-hour minimum), so the driver has to give a contract to the customer which says they hire the car for 6 hours and have to pay a substantially larger amount than the fare, and if they are stopped by police show that and

  • They have the exact same basic model at the core. Lyft just virtue signals about feminism and social justice more often to keep millennials and hipster reporters from buzzfeed off their case.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      No they don't. Uber's current model's only purpose is to raise its profile and tide it over until it has self-driving vehicles, at which point it will stop using human drivers for at least its primary/basic service to move passengers around. Lyft, if they have an interest in self-driving cars, doesn't seem to actively pursue it. They certainly haven't gotten caught in industrial espionage.

    • Yeah, no shit: the mustache is obviously a symbol for lesbianism... as for what might turn it pink, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
  • I think it's sad how little commentary focuses on how both Uber and Lyft are so unprofitable. I mean they are wildly popular, but until they can make serious money off their business model I don't see why they aren't seen a mild failure by non-investors. They will likely only do so after completely eliminating all competition, after most licensed taxi drivers have lost their jobs (that aren't subsidized by investor capital) and many transit systems are gutted. Similar case to Amazon. Which investors effect
    • I don't mean to sound critical, but have you ever ran a business? Income is more important than profit because it's harder to generate income than profit. When a new business is starting up ppl tend to operate at a loss and invest all profit into development (think buying a better bagel making machine if you make bagels). I would guess these guys do the same thing only at a bigger scale both temporally and financially. Dunno what you mean about taxis but where I live in Europe there are still plenty of ta

      • I don't mean to sound critical, but have you ever ran a business? Income is more important than profit because it's harder to generate income than profit.

        No it isn't and I can prove it. Start a business selling $2 bills for $1. I guarantee you that you will have a HUGE amount of revenue but you'll also be losing money faster than you can say "chapter 7 bankruptcy". It's easy to generate revenue when you are giving selling something that people want for less than it actually costs to provide. What is hard is generating profitable revenue. Growing the top line is difficult only when you have to generate sales that ALSO make a profit.

    • Amazon turns a huge profit. Just look at their SEC filings. There's a difference between gross profit and net profit. Many businesses, especially early on, use up their gross profit on capital investment, R&D, etc. They could stop doing that if they want and allocate the money into net profit, but investors typically don't care about that as much as growth.
      • "The profits from A.W.S. represented 56 percent of Amazon’s total operating income, even though the $2.57 billion in revenue from A.W.S. — up 64 percent from a year earlier — amounted to less than 9 percent of total revenue." https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... [nytimes.com]
        • So what is your point? There's nothing here about profits. Take a look at their SEC filings, gross profit is positive for every major aspect of their business.
          • I understand they are profitable now. I never said the opposite. But the majority of their profit comes from something totally unrelated to what their ultimate purpose is: to be the sole provider of everything physical you buy. It has taken them more than 20 years to come to where they are now, and most of that time what brought them the most revenue did not bring them very much profit. My point is that their incredible investor backing enabled this. Without it, it never would have happened. I must add righ
            • Ah I see your point. I'd be interested to see when each line of business became profitable in this sense, maybe someday I will go through the filings. Although if they weren't public the whole time that would be futile.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      Amazon has profited 2 billion dollars over the last 20years.

      That is very different than Uber, which has been losing money for a very long time now.

      Amazon was profitable in year 4 (2003), Uber is still losing tons of money in year 9.

      In general Amazon's losses were shrinking year on year, Ubers are growing.

      Source for 20year profit.

      https://revenuesandprofits.com... [revenuesandprofits.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Similar case to Amazon.

      No... Amazon is immensly profitable. It is just that their investors reward Amazon's profitability with a MASSIVE amount of market capital, and Amazon aggressively re-invests More than its profits into growing its business, and right now there is a LOT of perceived room for Amazon to grow.

  • Yes, but where's the model for making profit? (Score:3)

    by Bearhouse ( 1034238 ) on Tuesday March 13, 2018 @06:12AM (#56251379)

    I get it...get through insane amounts of cash running after revenue and market share...VCs keep it coming in anticipation of cashing-out when you list. But...are people really that dumb, after being burned by a bunch of other dud Unicorns?
    Who the hell would buy Uber today? They're destroying billions of dollars a year, with no signs of how to make a profit...neither have Lyft

    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com]

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